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2015 — Year in Review
BY ALLISON KOZICHAROW AND BERNICE BORN
W
iRED International completed a fruitful and vibrant agenda in 2015 as it marked its 18th anniversary.
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WiRED’s volunteers, staff and board of directors are proud of a very productive 2015. During the year, WiRED generated its largest number of new and updated health training modules, reached more people around the globe than ever before, and with its partners, ventured into new and challenging environments where low-resource populations have accessed its material in their first-ever exposure to prevention and health care information. WiRED issued its first Request for Proposal (RFP), welcomed an additional 68 people as graduates of its certificate program, and launched its first solar-powered health training hardware package that enables volunteers to take these programs into the farthest reaches of the planet for months, without connecting to the grid. WiRED’s tireless team accomplished this and much more, on a tiny budget, where 95% of its donations and grants go to the field programs and not to administration. WiRED is proud to have reached so many people with so much valuable health information at so low a cost. This article tells the story.
In 2015 WiRED updated and expanded its comprehensive health training program, which offers expertly written, peer-reviewed training material free of charge for everyone. WiRED added dozens of new modules for grassroots audiences and opened entire sections for physicians, nurses and community health workers.
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New modules cover topics including the chikungunya virus, dehydration, menstruation, menopause, tuberculosis and asthma. WiRED continued to enlarge its series of modules — for example, adding the Nutrition for HIV+ People module to its HIV/AIDS series. With the help of Translators Without Borders, WiRED now offers, among others, its rheumatic heart disease module in four languages, an echocardiogram module in Portuguese and Spanish and many other modules in Spanish, Armenian and French.
Wired continued to expand its Rapid Response modules by releasing one on measles early in 2015 following a measles outbreak in the U.S.
A major accomplishment in module production this year is the launch of the Module Express series this summer. The series offers short modules for general audiences who need only a basic course in topics such as dehydration, anatomy or rheumatic heart disease. The WiRED team immediately took the series to off-the-grid communities in the Peruvian Amazon. Our writers and editors plan to grow the Express module collection in the years ahead.
In addition to redesigning its main website, WiRED also renovated the website for its Health Learning Center. Now WiRED offers a clearer and more simplified approach to accessing its more than 350 medical and health education modules. After months of work in the present year, early in 2016 WiRED will add an innovative download program that will enable people around the world not only to view all our training material online but also to download modules for use on portable media.
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WiRED introduced two new programs this year. The first is the Community Health Education Initiative in Honor of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. WiRED invited organizations in low-resource regions to respond to a request for proposal (RFP). With funds provided by the Stevens family and WiRED’s board chair, Tony Hodge, WiRED will provide its entire training library, computer hardware and train-the-trainer programs in support of critical health and medical education to people in underserved communities.
The second new program is WiRED’s recently created program on Community Preparedness for Infectious Disease Epidemics. Medtronic Philanthropy awarded a grant to WiRED International to design the content and organize collaborating medical schools and other health-related institutions and organizations to assist communities in the global struggle against infectious diseases such as Ebola, malaria, cholera and dengue.
The release of a WiRED video — in both short and long versions — demonstrates how a small volunteer-driven organization can bring free medical information and education to people in remote and troubled areas of the world.
WiRED increased the visibility of rheumatic heart disease through the release of an animation video. In just minutes, the video describes how to prevent RHD and explains why the illness is so serious, why it prevails in underserved communities, and why it needs to be addressed.
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In 2015 WiRED continued to respond to current health alerts and highlighted important health studies. WiRED focused on the growing resistance to treatment drugs and the new recommendation to lower blood pressure guidelines. Upon noting the alarming increase of type 2 diabetes in low-income countries, WiRED underlined this global threat and offered information from the 16 modules in its diabetes training series. WiRED called attention to outbreaks of measles and Middle East respiratory syndrome, threats of rising diseases such as chikungunya, and the importance of flu vaccinations.
WiRED emphasized the prevention of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), which the World Health Organization calls the biggest health challenge on the globe today. WiRED added a new feature to the website called “Spotlight NCDs” and wrote about the big five: cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory diseases, hypertension, cancer and diabetes.
Also, WiRED underscored international and national health observances including Mesothelioma Awareness Day, Global Handwashing Day, World Antibiotics Awareness Week and World AIDS Day.
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In Kenya WiRED marked its 13th year of operation, where the organization continued its community health outreach programs and certificate programs and now provides Ebola awareness training. This year, 68 people earned training certificates, nearly doubling the number of people who earned certificates during the two previous years. To date our programs have given thousands of people the knowledge to guide their own health care. WiRED ran testimonials from Kenyans such as Kevin Mark and Denis Oyango, who have successfully used WiRED education tools in their communities.
In Armenia WiRED maintained a strong presence by teaching children about healthy dental practices and focusing attention in local communities on gestational diabetes education.
In Nicaragua WiRED delivered its current Learning Center medical and health information to a leading medical school, and to hospitals and community organizations in the towns of La Trinidad, El Sauce, El Tololar and León. With this accomplishment WiRED now can run additional education programs and train-the-trainer sessions in these underserved places.
In Peru WiRED completed its sixth trip to the remote Amazon to establish a community health center in Orosa, an isolated village, delivered portable materials for an extensive outreach program and outfitted a river boat as a health training facility.
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WiRED’s programs moved into new countries in 2015. In Haiti a California-based physician, Yen-Len Tang, M.D., made presentations to medical professionals using a WiRED-donated projector and module library. In Capetown, South Africa, Berkeley graduate student Thabani Nyoni demonstrated WiRED’s health education modules library to marginalized people who have limited access to health information and services.
WiRED welcomed two new members to its board this year. The first is Erin Baker, Ph.D., a quantitative user-experience researcher for a major social media company. Under her guidance, WiRED’s social media presence reached 1.1 million people in 56 countries. The second new board member is Elizabeth A. Touma, a longtime volunteer for WiRED and a certified fundraising executive and nonprofit management professional.
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In 2015 WiRED added a community outreach strategy to its programs to contact even larger and more isolated populations. WiRED upgraded its primary method of releasing programs into communities. It moved away from its previous practice of setting up banks of computers in centers and changing to a group outreach model where presenters take the interactive training modules to schools, churches, community centers and other meeting places.
WiRED can now bundle its educational modules onto thumb drives and laptops and, using powerful and efficient projectors, take them into the field where these programs often function as the only source of health information for disenfranchised populations.
WiRED sees its funders, volunteers, staff and board as part of a larger community dedicated to giving populations in low-resource regions the opportunity to understand prevention and basic health care. The other part of this larger community comprises the organizations and people in recipient populations who study the material, and who offer training. This larger community of people may be separated by ten thousand miles, and they may never meet each other, but they are part of an effort to improve human health in the places left behind. WiRED’s purpose is to assemble the resources and form the teams needed to accomplish this critical goal.
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